A Reindeer for my Lawn

I’m getting down to the last couple of chapters here in Round Two of major revisions. All the plot wrinkles that I’ve ironed out through the rest of the manuscript have bunched up here at the end, and are proving more irksome than I’d naïvely anticipated. On the one hand, it’s frustrating to see how much I still need to do, but on the other, it’s actually encouraging to know I have learned enough since I first wrote this chapter to improve it so markedly.

The biggest stumbling block in the chapter to this point has been the spot where—I finally realized—I broke the pact with my reader and completely glossed over an important moment that should have contained serious plot and character development. One moment it’s all “what if we tried this?” and the next it’s “and now we’re at the denouement!” No sense of struggle, of the protagonist having to work for the end result—nothing.

Today I finally muscled past it. It’s not pretty, or smooth, but I’ve drafted a patch. Score one for me! I was all set to do another micro-draft dance when I read on to the next half-page.

~headdesk~

Another half a chapter lies ahead, and within those pages, another non-negligible obstacle awaits. Now one of my supporting characters (or maybe two or three) has to change his reaction to events in order to be consistent with changes earlier in the story. The entire shape of the resolution needs to be different, and I’m not entirely sure how to mold it. (For some inexplicable reason, I’m now put in mind of a mold for some sort of garden statuary—and my brain has chosen to insert the form of a reindeer. My denouement has become a lawn ornament…)

So I’ve got quite a bit more work to do on this chapter, and I have only the vaguest idea what the reindeer should look like. Guess I’ll start by shoving four plot-legs on it, and hope it comes out looking vaguely quadrupedal; I can save the antlers for a later version.